How to know supported HbbTV version on TV

Question

I am trying to know which version is supporting my 2014 Samsung Smart TV but it is not detailed on the technical specifications, it only says it is HbbTV compatible.

My TV is this one (H5500 40"):

http://www.samsung.com/es/consumer/tv-av/tv/full-hd/UE40H5500AWXXC

Moreover, I would like to know which version of HbbTV are supporting other brands as Sony, TPVision, LG... Is there any database where I can check it?

Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

The HbbTV version supported by the TV is exposed in the UserAgent string. According to the HbbTV specification it needs to have the form:

HbbTV/1.1.1 (<capabilities>; [<vendorName>]; [<modelName>]; [<softwareVersion>]; [<hardwareVersion>]; <reserved>)

On my Samsung it is HbbTV/1.1.1 (;Samsung;SmartTV2014;T-NT14UDEUC-1005.2;;) WebKit. On LG it is Mozilla/5.0 (Unknown; Linux armv7l) AppleWebKit/537.1+ HbbTV/1.1.1 (; LGE; WEBOS1; 03.23.31; 1H13;) for example.

You can access this string with the Navigator object navigator.userAgent. The version strings HbbTV/1.1.1 maps to what is called HbbTV 1.0 in public. HbbTV/1.2.1 maps to 1.5, etc.

+-------------+---------------+
| UserAgent   | HbbTV Version |
+=============+===============|
| HbbTV/1.1.1 | HbbTV 1.0     |
| HbbTV/1.2.1 | HbbTV 1.5     |
| HbbTV/1.3.1 | HbbTV 2.0     |
| HbbTV/1.4.1 | HbbTV 2.0.1   |
| HbbTV/1.5.1 | HbbTV 2.0.2   |
| HbbTV/1.6.1 | HbbTV 2.0.3   |
| HbbTV/1.7.1 | HbbTV 2.0.4   |
+-------------+---------------+

You can find the specifications under https://www.hbbtv.org/resource-library/#specifications

Answer 2

Reputation is too low to add a comment to Kai's answer above, but the exact chapter of the HbbTV 2.0.1 spec that mentions the User-Agent header is 7.3.2.4. The format required as of the latest version of the spec now specifies version 1.4.1 for the HbbTV version, and adds a new field <familyName>:

HbbTV/1.4.1 (<capabilities>; <vendorName>; <modelName>; <softwareVersion>; [<hardwareVersion>]; <familyName>; <reserved>)

The spec says that the User-Agent header must only 'include' rather than 'be' a string as above, so some environments do choose to put extra information either side of the parts that are specified.

Answer 3

The best solution is to get it from userAgent as mentioned, but if you want to be sure you have to check each feature separately as is doing by modernizr, just do a simple test on feature you want to use even some devices are using newer hbbtv it couldn't work as expected. Older HbbTv has a simple specification and there is a space for each manufacturer do it in their own way, or just have a bugs as well...

For newer HbbTv versions you can create application/oipfCapabilities object, it cames from Hbbtv 1.5 version and read it in javascript but still I recommend you still use solution above.